SOLON ROBINSON, 1848 171 



Agricultural Tour South and West. — No. 7. 



[New York American Agriculturist, 8:219-20; July, 1849] 



[December 29, 1848] 



Having spent a night with Dr. Bingay,^ at whose house 

 the reader will bear in mind I stopped over to rest. It 

 was here that I saw the coco grass, mentioned in a former 

 letter, as growing out of the top of a sugar-house chim- 

 ney. The Doctor is a small planter, and has just erected 

 a new horse mill, of which I shall speak more particularly 

 hereafter. He is a practicing physician, and I believe a 

 very well-informed man, full of activity and enterprise. 

 But as I shall have occasion to speak of the Doctor again, 

 let us ride on. 



The next place worthy of note, is that of Col. Preston,^ 

 of South Carolina, son-in-law of the late Gen. Hampton. 

 It is a part of the "Houmas Grant," the other part being 

 owned by his brother-in-law Col. Manning.^ Col. P. has 



'Dr. J. P. Bingay (spelled also Binguet), in 1849 operator of a 

 small sugar plantation in Ascension Parish on the east side of the 

 Mississippi, just south of the Bowdon plantation, owned by the 

 Trist family. In the middle fifties and after, apparently operated 

 a sugar plantation in St. James Parish, sixty-six miles above New 

 Orleans. Champomier, Statement of the Sugar Crop Made in 

 Louisiana, 1849; Pike, Coast-Directory ; map of Plantations on the 

 Mississippi River; "Directory of the Planters of Louisiana and Mis- 

 sissippi," in Cohen's New Orleans Directory, 1855, p. 317. 



'John Smith Preston, born near Abingdon, Virginia, April 20, 

 1809; died at Columbia, South Carolina, May 1, 1881. Married 

 Caroline Hampton in 1830. Moved to South Carolina; then to 

 Louisiana. Engaged extensively in sugar planting. Built Burn- 

 side plantation house in 1840. Ardent secessionist. Joined staff 

 of General Beauregard in 1861; later transferred to conscript de- 

 partment with rank of brigadier general. Lamb's Biographical 

 Dictionary of the United States, 6:346 (Boston, 1903) ; Saxon, Old 

 Louisiana, 303-4; Spratling, William P., and Scott, Natalie, Old 

 Plantation Houses in Louisiayia, 46-49 (New Yoi'k, 1927). 



' Colonel John Laurence Manning, born at Hickory Hill, Claren- 

 don County, South Carolina, January 29, 1816; died at Camden, 

 South Carolina, October 29, 1889. Married Susan Frances Hamp- 

 ton. For several years conducted a sugar plantation in Louisiana, 

 but subsequently returned to South Carolina and resided at Sum- 



